Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering the Human Gesture | ARTES MAGAZINE 4/2/14 6:01 PM ARTES MAGAZINE A Fine Art Magazine: Passionate for Fine Art, Architecture & Design Home Columns Links Contact Categories New! Artes Pin Board FREE Sign up for ARTES Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering Magazine Mail List the Human Gesture Email Address September 11, 2013 Richard Friswell Carole Feuerman, a veteran of over four decades of creative work in many sculptural mediums, including resin, marble, and bronze, Search creates a range of monumental, life-sized, and smaller-scale works that encompass her signature faux réalité technique. Feuerman shares a hyperrealism tradition with artists like Popular Articles Duane Hanson and the narrative style of George Segal, but with a critical difference: approachability. Left: Carole Feuerman, City Slicker (1982), oil on resin, 31 x 21 x 14″ artes fine arts magazine http://www.artesmagazine.com/2013/09/14155/ Page 1 of 12 Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering the Human Gesture | ARTES MAGAZINE 4/2/14 6:01 PM When hyper-realistic sculpture first appeared on the gallery and museum scene in the 1980s, these iconographic figures served as a timely, three- dimensional narrative for a society in the throes of confronting long-standing stereotypes and cultural prejudices. It was time for the “Me Generation,” characterized by self-absorption and personal enrichment. Reflecting that contemporaneous motif, Duane Hanson’s Tourists (1970) or Queenie II (1988) were works mirroring our social- and class- based biases, observed and cataloged from a distance, existing in a carefully proscribed insular world—like characters in a wax museum—to be seen, but never touched. George Segal’s somber, George Segal, Sheraton Square (1980), public installation. unpainted plaster cast figures, on the other hand, were often arranged in groups, appearing like actors in an urban drama, suggesting alienation, latent violence, and indifference. Or they stood as single, expressionless figures trapped in a world of secretiveness, isolation, and emotional alienation—quietly despairing characters in a disconnected world. However, in the case of Feuerman’s meticulously finished pieces, the effect is not alienation, but intimacy. A close encounter with Grand Catalina (2005–2011), left, for example (the same image was cast in a series over six years, with slight variations), can evoke unexpected emotions. Face uplifted, eyes closed, suited and capped for laps in the pool —droplets streaming down her skin—the figure appears fresh from the water. Her lashes and Overview brows neatly arrayed, the pouting lips seem ready to part for a deep breath of poolside air; ARTES regularly presents in-depth articles an unexpected moment of intimacy can be and opinion on artwork in all its forms: painting, sculpture, art installations and found in the company of this lifelike image. We http://www.artesmagazine.com/2013/09/14155/ Page 2 of 12 Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering the Human Gesture | ARTES MAGAZINE 4/2/14 6:01 PM are left to wonder: If her eyes were to finally open, would she be surprised to see a photography. Our fine art reporting also stranger, so close by? Feuerman manages to convey a sense of strength and capability in includes architecture and design. Our her sculpture while, at the same time, offering an alluring vulnerability and sensuality. experienced team reports on recent and upcoming museum and art gallery Displaying an important narrative element characteristic of this sculptor’s work, this larger- exhibitions in classical art, modern art, than-life-sized figure—seemingly brimming with self-assurance— would appear to have no contemporary art, abstract art and art for difficulty managing the world before her eyes, once emerging from her momentary reverie. sale through auction events and international art dealers and art collections. Her mostly female forms appear to radiate an inner life, one of self-aware sensuality Recent Articles and strength. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, her sculptures, portrayed Yale Rep and ‘These Paper Bullets!’ All predominantly with eyes closed, are You Need is…Shakespeare denying us access to the realm-of- Guggenheim Museum Presents ‘Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the consciousness that would resolve the Universe’ mystery. Instead, Feuerman tantalizes and Perez Art Museum and Chinese Artist, Ai seduces the viewer with a voyeuristic Weiwei: a Smash in Miami connection to the personal space behind Hartford TheaterWorks Stages ‘The Other Paradise (1997), oil on resin, 26 x 16 x 9″ the eyelids of her figures. We are invited to Place’: A Voyage into the Unknown watch a lone female figure emerge from a Metropolitan Museum of Art’s, The Cloisters: Radiant Light: Canterbury shower as she wraps a towel around her hair; another figure languidly floats in an inner Cathedral Stained Glass tube; a half-figure appears to stand waist-deep in a pool, hugging a large beach ball; yet another playful female grips the end of a surfboard as a wave presumably surges around Site Tags her. The artist draws the line at the act of seeing; engaging the viewer, while depriving us of the ability to ever ‘know’ the true spirit of the character. American Impressionism Art art cirticism Feuerman’s figures, in spite of their nakedness or isolation, exude confidence and personal conservation power. Freshly emerged from their cleansing bath or pool, her Eve-like creations convey a history palpable sensuality, symbolizing their close ties to nature’s life-giving force. As David Asian art Rubin, of the San Antonio Museum of Art said, in a recent review: “As females, [Feuerman’s] figures personify heroic archetypes, women who are proud of their bodies contemporary art and triumphant in their achievements. As metaphors, they are expressive of hope and exhibition reviews determination, and of the faith that accompanies the drive to push forward on life’s journey, fine art criticism regardless of the challenges or obstacles that threaten to deter us.” [1] Functional Design Hidden Treasures Interior Design In no small way, this critique of Feuerman’s work is a reflection on the trajectory of her international http://www.artesmagazine.com/2013/09/14155/ Page 3 of 12 Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering the Human Gesture | ARTES MAGAZINE 4/2/14 6:01 PM career as a sculptor. Emerging as an artist in the early International art and years of the Feminist movement, she decided early on to produce work that challenged the old cliché of the design woman as “the weaker sex.” From the beginning, modernism Feuerman was committed to working with the human york new york artists form. The raw power of her imagery, more literal and photography figurative than symbolic, was designed to transcend the space design label of erotic or provocative. Rather, it was created to living represent personal power and the pure narrative essence of objective realism through her rendering of the human body. The risks in becoming a hyperrealist were great. Tree (2009-2011),detail, oil on resin, 62 x Functioning artistically on the verge of the simulacrum 37 x 29″ poses the threat of producing an empty, representational shell—imitative and convincing—but devoid of emotional intent. Feuerman’s sculptures, however, exceed the bounds of mere mimicry to become powerful symbols for the human experience. Her version of hyper-reality seems guided by sensory instincts distilled from life experience and an artist’s sensibilities, resulting in sculpture that achieves a universal truth: a strong emotional tie between subject and object—between the viewer and the viewed, inviting intimacy and a level of empathy with her sculptural work that is rarely attained. Far from detachment, an introspective work like Summer (2008), above right, invites the viewer to imagine a time when we could, once again, float thoughtfully in an inner tube on a languorous August afternoon, adrift on a warm sea. http://www.artesmagazine.com/2013/09/14155/ Page 4 of 12 Hyper-Realistic Sculptor, Carole Feuerman: Mastering the Human Gesture | ARTES MAGAZINE 4/2/14 6:01 PM Feuerman’s sculpture is often critiqued as being work is charged with sexual or erotic overtones. But, the artist describes the primary emotional expression in her work as sensual and meditative. “I want to capture the universal feeling of the fleeting moment. When my figures are rendered with their eyes closed and deep in thought, it’s like I’m presenting a story in the making. I want the viewer to complete the narrative,” she says. Her sculpting studio is generously blanketed, from floor to ceiling, with plaster dust. Row upon row of shelves are stacked high with errant body parts of every imaginable type: spare heads, torsos, hands, ears, and feet—resembling a surreal, contemporary setting inspired by a postmodern Prometheus. In spite of literary references to Mary Shelley’s mad laboratory of another century, Feuerman is inspired by this “Titan god of craftsmen and tinkers” and resolute in her effort to have each of her figures touched “by the better angels of our nature.” A work-in-progress lies prone on a worktable: a life-sized male figure in plaster, soon slated to be cast as a 13-foot athlete in a handstand position. The studio team lifts and balances the figure against a column, as Feuerman checks for anatomical accuracy, with a view to balletic grace in the final product. This is art-by-consensus, as the whole production team weighs in on the details of the final execution. Nearby, a serene female figure, nude except for a bathing cap, passively waits. As though having just risen from the sea, in a perfectly proportioned, twenty-first century version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, one wonders if she is quietly contemplating all the fuss.